Terma Foundry · Wylie
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Wylie Typing Tutor · Extended Wylie (EWTS)

Type Tibetan as fast as you think.

A complete course in typing Tibetan with Extended Wylie, the romanization used across Tibetan studies and digital Tibetan libraries. Use the keyboard you already own: every keystroke becomes Tibetan script as you type, from the first letter to whole sentences.

Begin the course How Wylie works
10
units
55
lessons
308
words, all glossed
Free
no account needed
1. Superscript ར 1 / 12
རྐ
Voice and lesson: Sonam Tsering
Write the letters

Every letter, stroke by stroke.

Watch each of the thirty consonants being written. The numbered arrows show the order of the strokes and the way the pen moves; each stroke keeps its own colour. Pick a letter to see it again.

ཀ ka 1 / 30
I. How Wylie works

Spell it, and the script builds itself.

Turrell Wylie's 1959 system gives every Tibetan letter a fixed spelling in plain Latin letters. The Extended Wylie scheme (EWTS) adds what the original lacked, from Sanskrit letters to punctuation, so that any Tibetan text can be typed on an ordinary keyboard and converted back to script without loss. Three rules carry most of the weight.

1

Type what is written, not what is said.

Tibetan spelling keeps letters that Lhasa speech has long since dropped. Wylie keeps every one of them, so you type the spelling, never the sound.

བསྒྲུབསbsgrubs is pronounced drup
2

Left to right, top to bottom.

A syllable can stack letters vertically. You type them in reading order — prefix, then the stack from the top down, then the vowel and any final letters — and the converter builds the stack for you.

བརྒྱདb·r·g·y·a·d eight
3

A space is a tsheg; a slash is a shad.

Tibetan separates every syllable with a dot, the tsheg, and ends clauses with a vertical stroke, the shad. In Wylie they are the two keys your thumbs and little fingers already know.

ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཆེ།thugs rje che/ thank you
Anatomy of a syllable

Take any syllable apart.

A Tibetan syllable has up to seven positions around its root letter. Type one in Wylie — or pick an example — to see where each letter sits, what it is called, and the order in which you type it.

Typing order
བརྒྱད
eight
space → ་

Ends every syllable. A space is a tsheg.

/ → །

Ends a clause or sentence. After it, a space is a space.

' → འ

A letter, not punctuation: 'o ma, milk.

. → གཡ

Separates a prefix from the root: g.yag, yak.

+ → པདྨ

Forces a Sanskrit stack: pad+ma, lotus.

⇧T → ཊ

Sanskrit sounds: T D N Sh, long A I U.

II. The course

Ten units, fifty-five lessons.

The order follows the way Tibetan is taught in a first-year university course: the alphabet and vowels, then the slots of the syllable one at a time, then vocabulary, sentences, numerals and Sanskrit. Every lesson opens with a short note; your stars and best speeds are kept in this browser.

Unit 01 0 / 10

The alphabet

གསལ་བྱེད།gsal byed

The thirty consonants, four at a time, in the order every Tibetan child recites them.

10 lessons
Unit 02 0 / 6

The vowels

དབྱངས།dbyangs

Four vowel signs above and below the letter, and the inherent a.

6 lessons
Unit 03 0 / 4

First words

རྗེས་འཇུགrjes 'jug

Open syllables, then the ten suffixes that close a syllable. Real words from here on.

4 lessons
Unit 04 0 / 4

Prefixes

སྔོན་འཇུགsngon 'jug

Five silent letters in front of the root, the 'a-chung in three roles, and the period.

4 lessons
Unit 05 0 / 4

Superscripts

མགོmgo

ra-mgo, la-mgo and sa-mgo: the three letters that sit on top.

4 lessons
Unit 06 0 / 4

Subscripts

བཏགསbtags

ya-btags, ra-btags, la-btags and wa-zur: the letters that hang below.

4 lessons
Unit 07 0 / 4

Full syllables

མིང་གཞིming gzhi

Prefix, superscript, root, subscript, vowel, suffix, post-suffix — all at once.

4 lessons
Unit 08 0 / 10

Vocabulary

ཚིགtshig

Ten themed word lists: numbers, family, body, nature, animals, food, colours, study, time, the week.

10 lessons
Unit 09 0 / 6

Sentences

ཚིག་གྲུབtshig grub

The shad, then greetings, introductions, the classroom and everyday life.

6 lessons
Unit 10 0 / 3

Numerals and Sanskrit

གྲངས་ཀgrangs ka

Tibetan figures, capital letters for Sanskrit sounds, and stacking with +.

3 lessons
III. The practice room

Accuracy first. Speed follows.

Type on your own keyboard: Wylie uses the ordinary Latin keys, so there is nothing to install and no layout to learn. The cursor waits for the right key, so every mistake is noticed and every word is typed correctly once.

Unit 01 · The alphabet

1.1ka kha ga nga

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IV. Reference

The whole system on one page.

Keep this open beside your textbook. Every Tibetan form below is produced by the same converter the tutor uses, so what you see here is exactly what your keys will type.

The thirty consonants

gsal byed sum cu · in the traditional order, four to a row

1 ཀ ka
2 ཁ kha
3 ག ga
4 ང nga
5 ཅ ca
6 ཆ cha
7 ཇ ja
8 ཉ nya
9 ཏ ta
10 ཐ tha
11 ད da
12 ན na
13 པ pa
14 ཕ pha
15 བ ba
16 མ ma
17 ཙ tsa
18 ཚ tsha
19 ཛ dza
20 ཝ wa
21 ཞ zha
22 ཟ za
23 འ 'a
24 ཡ ya
25 ར ra
26 ལ la
27 ཤ sha
28 ས sa
29 ཧ ha
30 ཨ a

The four vowels

dbyangs · shown on ka; with no sign, the inherent a

ཀི ki gi gu
ཀུ ku zhabs kyu
ཀེ ke 'greng bu
ཀོ ko na ro

The seven positions

In typing order. Only the root letter is required.

PositionTibetanLetters
Prefix སྔོན་འཇུག sngon 'jug g d b m '
Superscript མགོ mgo r l s
Root letter མིང་གཞི ming gzhi any of the thirty
Subscript བཏགས btags y r l w
Vowel དབྱངས dbyangs a i u e o
Suffix རྗེས་འཇུག rjes 'jug g ng d n b m ' r l s
Post-suffix ཡང་འཇུག yang 'jug s (d)

Stacks

Superscripts are typed before the root letter, subscripts after it. Shown with the inherent a.

ra-mgora on top
རྐrkaརྒrgaརྔrngaརྗrjaརྙrnyaརྟrtaརྡrdaརྣrnaརྦrbaརྨrmaརྩrtsaརྫrdza
la-mgola on top
ལྐlkaལྒlgaལྔlngaལྕlcaལྗljaལྟltaལྡldaལྤlpaལྦlbaལྷlha
sa-mgosa on top
སྐskaསྒsgaསྔsngaསྙsnyaསྟstaསྡsdaསྣsnaསྤspaསྦsbaསྨsmaསྩstsa
ya-btagsya beneath
ཀྱkyaཁྱkhyaགྱgyaཔྱpyaཕྱphyaབྱbyaམྱmya
ra-btagsra beneath
ཀྲkraཁྲkhraགྲgraཏྲtraཐྲthraདྲdraཔྲpraཕྲphraབྲbraམྲmraསྲsraཧྲhra
la-btagsla beneath
ཀླklaགླglaབླblaཟླzlaརླrlaསླsla
wa-zurw beneath
ཀྭkwaཁྭkhwaགྭgwaཅྭcwaཉྭnywaཏྭtwaདྭdwaཙྭtswaཚྭtshwaཞྭzhwaཟྭzwaརྭrwaཤྭshwaཧྭhwaགྲྭgrwaཕྱྭphywa

Keys that are not letters

Punctuation and the marks that steer the converter.

KeyTypesExample
space་ tshegka kha ཀ་ཁ
/། shadthugs rje che/
//༎ double shadka// ཀ༎
space + /་། after ngasong / སོང་།
'འ 'a-chung'o ma འོ་མ
.separatorg.yag གཡག · gyag གྱག
0–9༠–༩ figures2026 ༢༠༢༦

Sanskrit letters

Capital letters are different letters in Wylie. Needed for loanwords and names.

WylieTibetanValue
T ཊ Ta retroflex ṭa
Th ཋ Tha retroflex ṭha
D ཌ Da retroflex ḍa
N ཎ Na retroflex ṇa
Sh ཥ Sha retroflex ṣa
A ཀཱ kA long ā (a-chung beneath)
I ཀཱི kI long ī
U ཀཱུ kU long ū
M ཨཾ aM anusvāra, a nasal ṃ
H ཨཿ aH visarga, a final ḥ
-i ཨྀ -i reversed gi gu, vocalic ṛ/ḷ
+ ཀྵ k+Sha join two letters into one stack

Sources and further reading

Where the system comes from, and what this tutor is built on.

  • A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription, Turrell V. Wylie. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 22 (1959): 261–267. The original system.
  • THL Extended Wylie Transliteration Scheme, David Germano and Nicolas Tournadre, Tibetan and Himalayan Library (2003). The extensions for Sanskrit, punctuation and the period used here.
  • THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan, David Germano and Nicolas Tournadre (2003). The pronunciations given with each word.
  • Conversion by tibetan-ewts-converter by Roger Espel Llima (Apache 2.0), the JavaScript port of Lingua::BO::Wylie. Glosses checked against the Monlam Tibetan–English Dictionary.